AFP, Odessa :
Irina Chapravska has just snapped up the last room of a luxury hotel that costs 300 euros ($335) a night and offers a panoramic view of Ukraine’s serene Black Sea coastline.
But this is not Crimea, whose pebble beaches have long been a favoured summer destination for millions across the former Soviet Union-until, that is, Russia controversially seized the peninsula from Ukraine last year.
The senior company manager and swarms of tourists around her are lounging instead in the historic port of Odessa, 150 kilometres (93 miles) to the west.
“There is no more Crimea. So here I am in Odessa instead,” Chapravska said from behind a huge pair of sunglasses by a shimmering rooftop pool.
She and her nine-year-old son first caught the rays in Cyprus and Italy’s island of Sardinia before heading to Ukraine’s biggest port, a culturally diverse and thriving mecca. Most of New York’s ex-Soviet Jewish diaspora came from this city, which latterly has drawn younger generations seeking out its rather wild nightlife.
But neither Odessa nor other noteworthy destinations farther west-from the ancient cultural capital Lviv to Ukraine’s patch of the Carpathian Mountains-have ever witnessed an influx of revellers similar to the one testing their creaky infrastructure today.
Irina Chapravska has just snapped up the last room of a luxury hotel that costs 300 euros ($335) a night and offers a panoramic view of Ukraine’s serene Black Sea coastline.
But this is not Crimea, whose pebble beaches have long been a favoured summer destination for millions across the former Soviet Union-until, that is, Russia controversially seized the peninsula from Ukraine last year.
The senior company manager and swarms of tourists around her are lounging instead in the historic port of Odessa, 150 kilometres (93 miles) to the west.
“There is no more Crimea. So here I am in Odessa instead,” Chapravska said from behind a huge pair of sunglasses by a shimmering rooftop pool.
She and her nine-year-old son first caught the rays in Cyprus and Italy’s island of Sardinia before heading to Ukraine’s biggest port, a culturally diverse and thriving mecca. Most of New York’s ex-Soviet Jewish diaspora came from this city, which latterly has drawn younger generations seeking out its rather wild nightlife.
But neither Odessa nor other noteworthy destinations farther west-from the ancient cultural capital Lviv to Ukraine’s patch of the Carpathian Mountains-have ever witnessed an influx of revellers similar to the one testing their creaky infrastructure today.
